Rocket fired from Gaza strikes southern Israeli community

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
Israel said Palestinian militants fired rockets from Gaza on Tuesday (August 19) in violation of a truce, attacks that swiftly drew air strikes and the recall of Israeli negotiators from talks in Cairo on a long-term ceasefire.
One rocket hit an Israeli town close to the border with Gaza. One man was slightly injured.
Earlier, three rockets struck southern Israel, near the city of Beersheba, the military said, nearly eight hours before a ceasefire -- extended by a day on Monday -- was due to expire. Two other rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system over the southern town of Netivot.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, which the military said caused no casualties or damage. Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, the dominant movement in the Gaza Strip, said it had no knowledge of any rockets being fired.
Witnesses said Israeli aircraft carried out at least 25 strikes, and hospital officials reported that five Palestinians, two of them children, were wounded. The attacks spurred a new exodus of dozens of Palestinian families who had fled previous fighting and returned home only days ago.
On Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's order, Israeli delegates to the indirect talks with the Palestinians on ending the Gaza war and charting the territory's future, flew home.
Israel has said repeatedly that it would not negotiate under fire, and Egyptian mediators have been struggling to end the five-week-old Gaza conflict and seal a deal that would open the way for reconstruction aid to flow to the territory of 1.8 million, where thousands of homes have been destroyed.
The Palestinians want Egypt and Israel to lift their blockades of the economically-crippled Gaza Strip that predated the Israeli offensive launched on July 8 after a surge in cross-border rocket fire by Hamas.
The Palestinian Health Ministry put the Gaza death toll at 2,016 and said most were civilians in the small, densely populated coastal territory. Israel has said it killed hundreds of Gaza gunmen in the fighting. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have been killed.

Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest international multimedia news provider reaching more than one billion people every day. Reuters provides trusted business, financial, national, and international news to professionals via Thomson Reuters desktops, the world's media organizations, and directly to consumers at Reuters.com and via Reuters TV. Learn more about Thomson Reuters products: